Hi - this is a vague recollection of a film from very early childhood - i must have watched it in the early/mid 80's... I think it's from the sword & scorcery genre, possibly medieval/fantasy type... the warriors in the film looked like Vikings or similar.. but one scene has always stuck in my mind: A hero from the film is plotted against and betrayed - the method is that someone chalks a target (like a bullseye) on the back of his garment. Later, one of the betrayers (another warrior) uses this as aim and spears him in the back while the hero is drinking from a stream (??). Anyway his back was turned and he got speared - but being a 'mighty' warrior he staggers and just manages to turn, seeing his murderer before dying... Does this ring a bell with anyone? I also remember two other scenes in which there was a javelin/spear throwing competition between two people and (at the end of the film possiblly) a group of warriors having been sieged up or barracaded in a castle(?) open the gates and charge out.. it's entirely possible these could have been memories from other films though..

any help/leads much appreciated! - this has been an enduring mystery of mine :)

Not much help forthcoming for this one it seems. One film I can tell you about is "Thor the Conquerer." It is supposed to be a crazy barbarian movie and it has been on my "see this movie" list for a while. (Every now and then I manage to scratch one off, like the suprising "Hundra.")

I wonder if this might not be BLOOD OF THE DRAGON (1973) which featuring a talented spear fighter? A darn good Martial Arts movie that one too. THE REVENGER (1979), another Martial Arts film, I believe has some scenes similar to those described as well.

It sounds like a version of the Siegfried legend. Siegfried was invulnerable after having bathed in the blood of a dragon he slayed, only a leaf fell on his back while he was bathing in the blood, which left him vulnerable in that one spot. He was killed by a spear to the back.

The IMDB lists a number of adaptations of the legend, so we'd need more info to narrow it down to just one, but it's likely a version of that tale.

The story of Siegfried also makes up the fourth story of Wagner's Ring Cycle also called "Gotterdammerung". Here's a wiki link to a summary of the story, which pretty exactly matches the OP's description. So I think we can safely say that it is either the story of Siegfried or some variation on it.